


Hard is the Fall

by prozacpark



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: F/M, Gen, Hetgen, Multi, Retelling, Subtext
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-25
Updated: 2008-12-25
Packaged: 2017-10-14 07:06:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,763
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/146697
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/prozacpark/pseuds/prozacpark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sometimes it pleases the gods to bring people high before striking them down.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hard is the Fall

**Author's Note:**

> Written for daygloparker for Yuletide 2008.
> 
> 1). While in later periods, Apollo came to be worshipped as a sun god, it was Helios who was the Greek personification of the sun. Both gods seem to have had influence over Daedalus' life, so I intentionally merged them into one deity, Apollo Helios (which was one of Apollo's epithets) instead of having two different Sun Gods.

_Apollo, Apollo, god of all ways, my destroyer! What house have you brought me to?_ \- Aeschylus, _Oresteia_.

I. gods of shadows, gods of light.

His father wasn't an ironsmith, as he would later tell people.  Although he did work with iron from time to time, it was always covered in molten gold to cover up its unsightly color.  In a household that worshipped no other gods but the Sun God, nothing was good enough until it shone with the light of the sun.  This was true for his father, too.  The first arm he fashioned for Daedalus was made of gold.  There was no purpose to it than to hide his deformity, and suddenly, he went from being an outcast to being the boy touched by the Sun God.

His mother, who had come from the city of many gods, had kept as a votive a statue of Hephaestus with her for as long as he could remember.  She gave this to Daedalus before she died and he kept it with him and cherished it before he understood its significance. 

His father would sometimes give him little tasks to do around the workshop, watching the fire and keeping an eye on things to make sure that the gold didn't get burnt too much and lose its luster.  But it was the iron that fascinated him. 

One day, he asked his father to make him an arm of iron with joints and a structure capable of moving and this his father was unable to do.  So he tried making it himself, staying up late to draw pictures of it by firelight. 

This metal arm, he perfected over the years so that by the time Minos came to his city, Daedalus was using a system of levers and pulleys to pull the arm this way and that, using it to clutch hot objects or to reach inside the forge. Minos asked him about the arm, and so he explained to him its mechanisms.

Later, Minos said, "I'm on a divine quest.   I'm going to need faster ships."

And he answered, "There are no ships to be had here."

"I have ships aplenty.  I need something to make them faster." 

And this was the first thing he had worked on since his father's death that he enjoyed doing.  The idea came to him from watching birds fly, the wind under their wings carrying them up. So he made something of a vertical wing for Minos' ships, taking fabric and tying it to a pole he built on the ship. After Daedalus' invention was installed into all of Minos' ships, Minos asked Daedalus to come with him, "There will be plenty for you to build in my new kingdom.  This is no place for you."

When he left, he took only the votive of Hephaestus his mother had given him, leaving behind the household god. 

\---

Seven years at sea, with the constant heat that made the journey even more difficult and the sun (and the moon, the stars) stopped being sacred. 

When the bull - so white that it shone with the water dripping from its skin - rose from the sea at Minos' prayers, it was the first miracle any of them had seen in years, and this was proof that they had been right to follow Minos to Crete.  Minos, not yet a king, dropped to his knees and joined his hands together in thanks to Poseidon.  Sacrifices, Daedalus knew, would come later.  For now there was gratitude more pure than any libation of blood could have been. 

Minos would have given anything to the gods for this sign, this gift.  But the gods were fond of testing mortals, so they asked him to give back the divine bull in the form of a sacrifice. 

That night, by the dim light of fire, Minos asked Daedalus to build him a palace and inside it, a structure that would keep the sun itself from glimpsing inside, and there, Minos would hide the white bull from the gods.

So Daedalus built a hiding place - a prison underground, so far beneath the surface that not even Helios, the all seeing Sun God, could penetrate it with his fiery gaze. 

"The gods can't get to me as long as I have you, Daedalus," the king said to him.

-

II. golden girl from the sun palace

Being in possession of a divine bull, King Minos sought to find a divine wife - or as divine as could still be found on Earth.

There were tales in that time of daughters of Helios - exiled from Olympus for their harmful crafts - living among mortals. One day, Minos set out to find these goddesses.  No one knew how he seduced her, but he brought Pasiphae back with him from the Sun Palace in Colchis.

When Daedalus himself met her, he recognized the divinity in her as he never had in the shining sun itself.  But she shone with the same light; it gleamed in her golden hair and blazed in her fiery eyes.  Daedalus bowed before her as he never had to his king.

Daedalus had remained Minos' only companion, his confidant and his friend.  He himself saw Minos as neither.  He had, like the others, thought of him as king and given him the respect due his title.  But not since the bull rose from the sea.  Daedalus wasn't a pious or a devout man, but Minos had given his word - no matter whether to men or gods, and he had broken it.  This sat heavily on Daedalus even though he had been the one to help him do it.  But in Pasiphae's presence, he started to forgive Minos.  The gods must have forgiven him to have given him one of their own.

\---

In time, he became Pasiphae's confidant as he had become the king's.  He found himself confiding in her in return.  He found beauty in his work again and sometimes made her pieces of jewelry he remembered from his childhood.  These she always wore proudly and he saw as tributes.

Once, she touched his iron arm and asked, "How did you lose this?"

Daedalus said, "I was born without it," and this he had never told anyone before.  To lose an arm to an accident was the work of fickle fortune, but to be born without it meant that it was the work of the gods. 

She smiled at that and said, "Like Hephaestus. But his skill was such that the gods had no choice but to allow him back into Olympus."

He wondered if she had seen the votive of the god that he still kept with him, but did not ask her that. Instead, he told her about the first arm he fashioned for himself and of the days before that.

She remained silent after he finished, her hand still on his arm. Finally, she said, "But it helps you in your work, does it not?"

He nodded.

"So you would rather not have an arm made of flesh and blood that feels pain and cannot plunge itself into fiery depths."

It was not a question.  He looked at her hand on his arm and said, "I would not, but in my weaker moments, I think I would give anything to be able to feel it." 

\---

When she returned to his forge again, she brought him a vial filled with liquid the color of moonbeams and she said, "Do you know that I share my sister Circe's gifts?"

He had not, but he had never considered this matter.  King Aeetes, her brother, too was renowned for his craft.

He did not say a word as she took his iron arm and gently spread the silvery liquid from the vial on it.  He did not question her and this would only occur to him after the transformation.  She asked him to sit down and he thought that he could feel her touch on his metal arm.

"You'll feel pain before you'll feel anything else," she warned him, and he could already feel a burning sensation tingling in his fingertips, and he imagined that he could feel the coolness of her touch on his arm. 

Then the pain came and he screamed with it as she held on to him.  "Birth pangs," she told him. 

Afterwards, she said, "That was the last of it, and there will be no more of it." 

"Come," she walked towards his forge and he followed.  Taking his hand into hers, she dipped it into fire, and he found himself already reluctant to do something he had done a million times before because he could feel the fire now.  But there was no pain there.  He noticed also that her skin did not burn; she had been born of the sun, and so heat had no power over her.

She withdrew her hand, but he kept his there, amazed at the feeling of fire, without its heat. 

"You will be able to use it as before, but it will be real and you will have control over it."

He turned to her and was speechless.  Before he could find the words to show his gratitude, she laughed and said, "Think of this as an answer to your prayers, Daedalus. For all the offerings you've been making to me."

He felt the heat in his cheeks at that, but she smiled. It was true that he saw her as something of a goddess, but it did not please him to have her think that. The others bowed low before her because of her status, her divinity, but it wasn't these that impressed him. He no longer bowed in front of Minos and there were no gods he still made offerings to.

As if reading his thoughts, she said, "I feel honored, Daedalus, by your devotion. But the gods are not fond of being ignored, especially my father, the all-seeing Sun God. They do not always acknowledge the prayers, but never fail to acknowledge neglect or offense."

-

III. the bull of minos.

It was after seeing Daedalus' new arm that King Minos gave to him one of his slaves, Naucrate, as a wife. He was offered, too, a small house of his own just outside his forge, along with many gifts from both the king and the queen. Following this, he spent less time building things, until Pasiphae asked him to build a dancing ground with polished bronze for Ariadne, her firstborn.

As he worked on this, she came to him again one day and said, "You are loyal to my husband and do as he asks, but you no longer take pleasure in doing his bidding."

This was not an accusation, he knew, but rather, curiosity on her part. And since he had confessed to her greater transgressions he himself had committed, he did not hesitate now to tell her of the white bull that had risen from the sea.

When he had finished, she asked, "And is this creature still among us?"

"It is hidden," he replied, "but still in Crete.

"Do you know where he is?"

And this was the first time he considered lying to her, but before he could say anything, she said, "I wish to see Poseidon's bull."

"It is late," he replied, "We should wait till morning, when the king himself can take you to see the bull."

She shook her head and said, "He won't show it to me, I know. If I see the bull, it will have to remain a secret from him. And only you know where it is, besides Minos."

So that night, he did not return to his house but took the queen to see the bull from heaven.

The creature seemed to recognize its own and approached Pasiphae when she entered the chamber where it was kept. The queen gasped at its beauty and its grace and stroked its silvery hide and flushed red and gleamed in a way Daedalus hadn't seen since he first saw her. She whispered Aphrodite's name under her breath and prayed, "Mother of Eros, do not lead me down this path."

He overheard her, but did not question or understand the prayer. She withdrew her hand from the bull with force, as if its hide had burned her the way fire never could. Turning away from the bull and to Daedalus, she said, "Take me back now."

"Is everything all right?" he asked, surprised at the abrupt change in her mood, but he followed her out the doorway.

"I am fine," she said, "Just…please, bolt the gates to the chamber and do not speak a word of this to the king."

\---

She stopped visiting Daedalus after that, and he wondered briefly if she blamed him for helping Minos keep for himself what rightfully belonged to the gods. During this time, Naucrate gave him a son, Icarus, and he withdrew, once again, from the palace life and royal commissions.

There were rumors, around this time, of a wasting illness that had overtaken Queen Pasiphae, but he had not seen her in so long that he did not believe them. She was the daughter of gods, and he did not doubt that the gods would take care of her.

Icarus was walking by the time he saw Pasiphae again. King Minos was away to take part in a small battle that had started on Crete's borders and he had taken most of the men of the city with him. Pasiphae called him to an empty megaron in the middle of one night, and he found her standing in front of a mural depicting Europa, Minos' mother, being carried off by Zeus in the form of a bull.

"Is there news from the battle?" He asked first, seeing her in simple robes with her hair down and undone. She looked tired, as if whatever was keeping her away from palace life had made her human and susceptible to human flaws.

"Do you think," she asked, "that Zeus transformed into human form before he came upon Europa? They say he did not when he came to Nemesis. Will this be the fate of women of Minos' house?"

"You did not call me here to read oracles," he answered, "You know better than I what the gods have in store for us."

"We've been good to each other these past years, haven't we, Daedalus?"

"We have," he agreed.

"And I have been good to Minos, too," she said. "I've given him sons and daughters both, and been loyal and faithful even when his gaze strayed."

"You've been better than he has deserved, certainly," he answered. "The gods must have forgiven Minos to have given you to him," he added, putting into words something he had thought for a long time now.

She laughed at that, but it was not the harmonious sound it usually was. It sent a shiver down his back. She said, "But you never thought that I might be the instrument of his punishment, did you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Do you remember the night you took me to see the bull from the gods?" Before he could answer, she sat down on the steps leading up to the throne, and said, "I've been consumed with an unholy desire since then. And nothing I do seems to take it away. I dream of it at night and can think of nothing but that during the day. I cannot make it go away, and I cannot take to the noose because I can't even die."

It took him a few moments to get her meaning, and when he did, he could not help but gasp aloud. Finally, he said, "What do you want me to do?"

"I do not know. I know only that this cannot go on. I can't live like this."

And she could not die either, he knew. "I can't do what you're asking of me," he finally said, realizing that this was the first time he had refused to help them violate laws of gods and laws of men.

"I'm not asking for anything. I will not ask you to share in my transgression, Daedalus. I cannot," she said. "I called you here because I thought that where spells and will haven't worked, confession might. Perhaps the gods will accept this small offering, because I don't think I'm strong enough for more than this."

\---

Once Minos returned from his battles, Pasiphae retreated again from public life and Daedalus did not see her for months. Minos had taken to an Athenian girl he had brought back from the war, and no one really noticed the absence of the queen.

One day, he was out in the field with Icarus, teaching him about various plants things he had learned from Pasiphae when he saw a white, gleaming cow grazing the fields, and the way the sunlight reflected off of its hide made him think of the queen. And so an idea formed in his mind, for a new invention.

He knew just which plant to give to the cow to make it slumber and not feel pain. He asked his wife to skin the cow, taking care not to ruin its hide. And he himself set to work creating a hollow cow-shaped form with the softest of woods. He did not let Icarus help him with this, even though he was learning fast his father's trade, young as he was. He did not wish to enlist him in this transgression.

Only when he had the form completed and covered with the cow's hide did he send for Pasiphae, waiting until Minos was away again. In the middle of the night, for the Sun itself would turn away if he knew of his daughter's intended transgression.

She looked worse than she had when he had last seen her. Her hair seemed thinner and her robes hung loose on her figure. There were dark circles under her eyes, and he had never thought that a daughter of the gods could ever be touched by such mortal frailties. And seeing her now, the weight he had felt at his part in this lifted somewhat. He had helped Minos, and the gods had seen it fit to punish the king by punishing his wife. It was only right that he help her with this.

So he showed her the wooden cow and how it worked, and she wept and held his hands and thanked him and said that she just wanted it to be over now. He turned away as she dropped her robes and climbed inside the wooden cow. He took the cow to the chamber where the heavenly bull was hidden. He left her there and said, "I will come back for you later. Call for me if…I will be close by."

Later, he found her outside the chamber, wearing the clothes he had left for her. She looked tired and flushed, but he could already see her glow returning and this pleased him. He said, "Was it," he stopped, not knowing what to say, and then began again, "Is it over?"

She nodded, and he could see tears forming in her eyes, "And now, we will never speak of this again?"

It took him a moment to realize that it was a question and not a command, so he nodded, "No one need ever know of this."

She straightened her robes and stood up straight and said, "Now, will you take the bull to the sea and give him back to Poseidon as the god had intended?"

"King Minos will not like that," he reminded her.

"I will deal with Minos when he returns. I just…want it all to go away, want it gone from here and away from my thoughts and my sight. This has to be the end of it."

So he took the bull back to the sea from where it had risen and had a priest slit its throat before the sun came up. And this, he thought, was the end of it.

\---

Minos did not ask about the bull when he returned, but he did not fail to notice Pasiphae's growing belly, and Daedalus noticed that Naucrate's pregnancy progressed at a slower pace.

"Who was it?" Minos asked him eventually. "Was it some god disguised? Poseidon, perhaps, to pay me back?"

And Daedalus just shook his head and feared what was to come.

One night, Minos asked Daedalus to take Pasiphae to the chamber he had built for the bull and to keep her there until she had given birth. The creature she gave birth to confirmed all of Minos' fears -- a tiny creature with perfect hands and arms with the head of a bull and hooves -- and Daedalus feared not for his own life, but for his son's and wife's.

Minos did not bring Pasiphae back into the palace after the birth, as he had promised.

"You betrayed me, Daedalus, the both of you," the king said to him outside the birthing chamber, "I should exile both of you, or worse, have you killed."

Daedalus did not argue with that, and Minos remained silent for a long while before he said, "I need you to build something else for me. Like the chamber you built me for the bull, hidden from the eyes of the gods, but impenetrable by men. And here, I will hide the son my wife has given birth to."

\---

Pasiphae called the child Asterion, but to the few who knew of its existence, he came to be known as Minotaur, bull of Minos.

When the Labyrinth was completed, it was Daedalus who was sent to take the child away from Pasiphae, and with him, she could plead the way she might not have with Minos. For this, he resented the king even more.

After Minotaur had been trapped inside, Daedalus, too, was imprisoned. His wife gave birth before her time in his absence and he lost both her and the child. Icarus was brought to him to share his imprisonment.

Minos returned, after some time, to bring Pasiphae back to the palace, but she refused to return without her son. Twice more, he asked her, and she refused. In time, Minos stopped visiting her, so they both became exiles, forgotten by the world outside.

-

IV. a tribute taken; a tribute given.

In his exile, he learned to work with wood, which was readily made available to him by Minos, to keep him occupied. And his son's skill with this was so great that he wished he could have seen him work with iron.

Pasiphae occupied herself with trying to grow a garden away from the sun, and in time, she was able to make some chthonic herbs grow.

Icarus continued to refer to her as the queen long after Daedalus himself had stopped, and one day, she asked him to stop. "It's been a long time since I've been a queen. And even longer since I was a goddess," she said.

\---

"What do you miss the most?" He asked her once.

"Hmm," she looked thoughtful and said, "My children. Phaedra was still so young when I had to leave. And Ariadne and Androgious would be grown already."

He noticed the sadness in her voice and was grateful, for his sake if not Icarus', that he had his son with him. "I miss making things with iron," he told her.

She replied, "I miss sunlight."

He looked at her and noticed, not for the first time, that the early gleam of her presence had faded. She had been too long among mortals, too long in exile away from sunlight, like Persephone trapped in the underworld, separated from her native element.

\---

As if in answer to both their prayers, Ariadne came to them that night. Ariadne was the only one old enough to have remembered fully what took her mother away, and so Pasiphae refused to see her.

But Daedalus went to her and asked what brought her to them.

She replied, "I've heard of your fabled inventions, Daedalus, and seen myself what you can build. A prison to hold the Minotaur, the lovely dancing ground you made for me, and even this, your own prison."

"Does your father have need of me again, Princess?" He asked.

She replied, "I'm not my father's puppet. If he has need of you, he will come himself. No, it is for myself that I wanted something."

"What is it that you want built?"

Ariadne looked around the prison and said, "I was hoping for the secret to the Labyrinth."

"You wish to liberate the Minotaur?" he asked.

"And doom all of Crete to death? No, I have no such intentions. I was hoping to, instead, free the men my father is planning to feed to the monster."

He had a feeling that she wished, specifically, to save one man and not all the men. He wondered briefly if Pasiphae's son had really turned into a monster or if this was the justification Minos used for his killing. He said, "There's no secret to the Labyrinth. Once lost in it, even I cannot find my way out."

She nodded and asked, "In that case, maybe some magical arrow that will point to Theseus – the leader of the Athenian men – the way out."

He considered her request, considered also what she was asking, and what she was ready to do for this Theseus, and he said, "Magic is more your mother's realm, as you may remember."

"Would you take me to her?" She asked, and her voice lost its commanding tone as she added, "Please."

"Spin a thread of bright colors," he told her. "And bring this with you when you're done. Bring me also some metal and some things to create a forge with here."

She nodded with eagerness, and he was taken by how much she looked like her mother. Even with her dark hair, she showed her heavenly heritage. He had a feeling he would not be able to refuse anything to her, either.

\---

"She's lovely," he told Pasiphae when she asked about Ariadne, "And in love."

She smiled in response, and he had not seen her this happy since before he had shown the bull to her and doomed her forever. "Tell me more."

So he told her everything Ariadne had told him, including what she had said about the Minotaur. At this, she fell silent and would not speak to him, and so he left her.

Later, she asked, "Do you think he might have been different, and not a monster, if Minos hadn't taken him away from me?"

"Anything is possible when the gods are bent on punishing someone," he answered, but he did not understand why she was being punished.

\---

When Ariadne brought him the things he had asked for, he was able to make a forge he could use to build a sword with which to slay the Minotaur. The thread, he asked her to take to Pasiphae, and he left them alone to talk.

He himself asked Icarus to fashion the sword for him, giving him directions and watching him surpass anything he himself could've done at his age. And this was when the plan came to him. He had not cared, being trapped in this place for so long, about himself. But suddenly, he wanted nothing more than for his son to be out of this life and to be able to go with him, to watch him grow and learn and become better than he himself was.

So he asked Ariadne to bring him feathers when she returned. Feathers enough to give wings to an entire flock of birds. He himself started collecting wax from all the candles they burned, and asked her to bring more.

"What are you building?" Pasiphae asked him when she saw him laying down foundations for three sets of wings.

He said, "You'll see, when it is done."

Icarus, he let in on the secret, enlisting his help, and he could see his son already beaming at the prospect of having wings, at the possibility of getting out of here.

Pasiphae worked by candlelight to give some of her magic to Ariadne, to give life to the thread Ariadne had spun for Theseus.

When Ariadne came back, she brought the last thing he needed. In return, he gave her the sword, anointed with Pasiphae's herbs, and told her where to strike.

And Pasiphae showed her how to use the thread, "You need only give it to him, and it will guide him in and out of the Labyrinth," she said. "Afterward, tell your Theseus to return the bull of Minos to his element. Return him to the sea, Ariadne."

Ariadne nodded, and Pasiphae embraced her and kissed her and sent her on her way.

It would not be long before King Minos would hear of this new betrayal, but another day was be all Daedlus would need to finish his invention . Where Minos had only imprisoned him before, he knew that he would kill him and Icarus both for this new crime of helping Ariadne betray her father.

\---

When he was finished, he told Pasiphae about his invention and showed her how it worked. And she asked, "Are you sure it will work?"

"Yes, I have tried it and it will work even better with air to guide it. As long as we stay away from the sun and the sea and are suspended in between, it will be fine."

"That's a wonderful creation, Daedalus," she told him, "Your best, even."

He heard a finality in the way she said that, and so he asked, "You won't come with us?"

"I cannot. My place is here, where I was once a queen."

"I cannot leave you here alone," he said, but he knew that he would. For Icarus.

"Do not let me keep you here, Daedalus. You belong out in the world."

"I would never leave you here alone if not for Icarus."

She nodded, "Just as I cannot leave my children behind."

\---

He saw her once more before he left, and she reminded him to make offerings to the gods, pressing the votive of Hephaestus into the palm of his hand, and he did not remember having brought it with him. He wondered if Pasiphae had found it or if Naucrate had given it to Icarus, who had forgotten about it. He did not ask, but he clutched the tiny statue in his hand, finding it more dear now than if he had brought it here himself. She said, "Make offerings especially to my father and do not forget about Poseidon. You'll be putting yourself into their realms, between Poseidon's sea and the Sun God. "

This, he could not bring himself to do. Not to Apollo Helios, the god of his childhood, who had never meant anything to him except when he shone through Pasiphae. And not to Poseidon, cause of so many of his transgressions. This he did not tell her. Instead, he said, "The invention is quite safe. If the gods did not wish for me to be able to fly, I never would've been able to make these wings."

"Sometimes, it pleases the gods to bring people high before striking them down. It lessens their glory to bring low what is already insignificant," she said.

And he thought now of her fall and how the gods had lifted her up and brought her low, but he did not say that either. He embraced her and held on for several moments before letting go.

"I hope we will meet again someday, Queen Pasiphae," he said, bowing low before her.

He left behind a set of wings for her, and left with Icarus and their wings.

\---

Standing at the edge of the mountain, he could see already his son's eagerness to fly. He had been locked away for most of his life, away from humans, away from the sun, sentenced to suffer for others' mistakes. And now, he was going to do what only gods were capable of doing. So Daedalus explained to Icarus how the wings worked, and said, "If you fly too close to the sea, the wings will grow heavy with moisture and will not carry you. But be wary of flying too high, for the sun will melt the wax that holds the feathers together."

\---

He first knew something was wrong when he saw the feathers falling from the sky and turned his head up to look for Icarus, but sunlight, with brilliance such as he had never seen, blinded him. Too late, he prayed to the gods, to Apollo Helios and then to Poseidon, but prayers without offerings are worthless, and he had nothing left to offer.

\---

When he landed back on the ground, he found himself in Cumae, utterly alone. He had left Pasiphae behind for Icarus, and now he did not have anything left, save for the wings. He had helped Minos, even Pasiphae, commit their transgressions against the gods and had thought himself above the punishment. The gods had seen it fit to punish Minos through Pasiphae, and Daedalus, too. He had been indifferent to the gods and to their laws, and so they, too, had become indifferent to him and his plight. So many sacrifices to make up for the one Minos had not offered. But all of them, he knew, were given unwillingly and so were unsanctified. He knew even before he came upon the nearby city that it was time to change that.

When Icarus' body washed up on the shore, he faltered in his earlier conviction. But he stood there until the sea took the body back. He did not claim it and let Poseidon have this offering.

For Apollo Helios, the god of his childhood, Daedalus built his greatest creation: a temple made out of stone, polished and covered with the clearest silver that reflected sunlight and glorified the Sun God as never before. Inside this temple, he hung up his wings, his last offering to the indifferent god. Not a symbol of defeat, but rather, an acknowledgement of the Sun God's dominion over him. More than that, he could not offer. So he did not kneel before the god or pray as his father might have.

When he left Cumae to go find something else to occupy his life, he took nothing with him, leaving behind even the votive of Hephaestus with the household god.

\---


End file.
